AAAAAAAAH!

It’s the sense of the perfectly ordinary – humdrum people in a humdrum town, portrayed in grainy, lo-fi video – that makes the extraordinary premise so startling and certain to offend. For the very logic of existence has been turned on its head. We have entered a world, where familiar rules no longer apply, whose inhabitants are petty, vicious and above all licentious. They address their differences, familiar issues of status and rivalry, with a surfeit of malice and not an ounce of shame. They literally behave like apes.

For viewers who don’t leave in righteous indignation, a strange fascination will probably have taken hold, brought on by the spark of recognition. Here are qualities we know but (hopefully) suppress in ourselves, laid bare in all their dubious glory. The trick lies in stripping away the veneer of language, which, paradoxically, may obscure more than it reveals.

Steve Oram (b. 1973) studied English and film at the University of East Anglia and has worked extensively in theatre, television and film as a comic actor. He starred in, and shared the writing credits for, SIGHTSEERS, from 2013. AAAAAAAAH! is Oram’s debut full-length feature as a director.